1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a liquid crystal display, and more particularly to a liquid crystal display device and a driving method thereof that are adaptive for reducing the number of data lines as well as the number of data drive integrated circuits corresponding thereto.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a liquid crystal display (LCD) controls the light transmittance of a liquid crystal using an electric field, thereby displaying a picture. To achieve this, the LCD includes a liquid crystal display panel having a pixel matrix and a driving circuit for driving the liquid crystal display panel. The driving circuit drives the pixel matrix such that picture information can be displayed on the display panel.
FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional liquid crystal display device.
Referring to FIG. 1, the conventional LCD includes a liquid crystal display panel 2, a data driver 4 for driving data lines DL1 to DLm of the liquid crystal display panel 2, and a gate driver 6 for driving gate lines GL1 to GLn of the liquid crystal display panel 2.
The liquid crystal display panel 2 has thin film transistors TFT each of which is provided at each crossing of the gate lines GL1 to GLn and the data lines DL1 to DLm and liquid crystal cells connected to the thin film transistors TFT and arranged in a matrix type.
The gate driver 6 sequentially applies a gate signal to each gate line GL1 to GLn in response to a control signal from a timing controller (not shown). The data driver 4 converts data R, G and B from the timing controller into analog video signals to thereby apply video signals for one horizontal line to the data lines DL1 to DLm every one horizontal period when a gate signal is applied to each gate line GL1 to GLn.
The thin film transistor TFT applies a signal from the data lines DL1 to DLm to the liquid crystal cell in response to a control signal from the gate lines GL1 to GLn. The liquid crystal cell can be equivalently expressed as a liquid crystal capacitor Clc because it has a common electrode opposed to a pixel electrode connected to the thin film transistor TFT with a liquid crystal therebetween. Such a liquid crystal cell includes a storage capacitor (not shown) connected to a pre-stage gate line in order to keep the data voltage charged in the liquid crystal capacitor Clc until the next data voltage is charged therein.
The liquid crystal cells of such a related art conventional LCD has a number of vertical lines equal to the number (i.e., m) of the data lines DL1 to DLm because they are provided at crossings of the gate lines DL1 to DLn and the data lines DL1 to DLm. In other words, the liquid crystal cells are arranged in a matrix type in such a manner to make m vertical lines and n horizontal lines.
The related art LCD requires m data lines DL1 to DLm so as to drive the liquid crystal cells having m vertical lines. Therefore, the related art LCD has a drawback in that a number of data lines DL1 to DLm should be provided to drive the liquid crystal display panel 2 and hence process time and a manufacturing cost are wasted. Furthermore, the related art LCD has a problem in that because a large number of data drive integrated circuits (IC's) are included in the data driver 4 so as to drive the m data lines DL1 to DLm, the manufacture cost is high.